logo

Quotes About Mystery

You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you".
~ Catherynne M. Valente
You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar and wonder where she got it. You will always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her. "I have come for the girl in the window," he said, and his eyes filled with tears.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
She is dead. Almost certainly dead. Nearly conclusively dead. She is, at the very least, not answering her telephone.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
A labyrinth, when it is big enough, is just the world.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Forests have secrets,' he said gently. 'It's practically what they're for. To hide things. To separate one world from another.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
All things are strange which are worth knowing.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
I reminded myself: when a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening, contains everything. Every possibility, both perfect and putrid. Surely such mysteries are the most enticing things You grant us in this mortal mere -- the fruit in the garden, too, was like this. Unknown, and therefore infinite. Eve and her mate swallowed eternity, every possible thing, and made the world between them.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Just you wait. Papa Koschei is coming, coming, coming, over the hills on his red horse and he's got bells on his boots and a ring in his poket and he knows your name, Marya Morevna.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
September could see it. She did not know what is was she saw. That is the disadvantage of being a heroine, rather than a narrator. She knew only that a red light glowed and went dark, glowed and went dark.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?
~ Catherynne M. Valente
She who invented words, and yet does not speak; she who brings dreams and visions, yet does not sleep; she who swallows the storm, yet knows nothing of rain or wind. I speak for her; I am her own.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
One of the many quotes on love..."Love can come only with time and sentience. We learn it as we learn language--and some never learn it well. Love is like a tool, though it is not a tool; something strange and wonderful to use, difficult to master, and mysterious in its provenance.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
When a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening, contains everything. Every possibility, both perfect and putrid. Surely such mysteries are the most enticing things...grant[ed] us in this mortal mere...Unknown and therefore infinite.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Old things have strange hungers.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
It's a secret and if you tell a secret the secret comes alive and can never be kept safe at home again.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
If there are spells, they have a right to weave.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties. Her shoes are red; her eyes are green. She's an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris. She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare. They all do. Every time. They have to. It's that kind of story.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
For when a box is shut, you cannot tell what it might contain, so you might as well say it contains everything, because, really, it could contain anything, see? But when you open it, you affect what is inside. Observing something changes it, that's a law, nothing to be done.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Here! 'Not thread nor glue, not nails nor screws, will ever self and shadow wed.' Helpful, those poet-types. Perhaps this one: 'Seek the grimy queen of dread machines, if you your errant shadow miss.' Now that's quite good! As a Prophetic Utterance, Third Class (Vague Hints and Mysterious Signs), you couldn't ask for better. It's downright plain-spoken!
~ Catherynne M. Valente
Did everything that had magic have teeth?
~ Catherynne M. Valente